Crafting Excellence

The book, in Italian and English, is a FUL Magazine project commissioned by Ruffino 1877 and coordinated by Francesca Polizzi, architect and creative consultant. It wasn’t meant to be a catalogue or a collection of interviews: it had to be an object you keep on the table and leaf through again and again.

The brief asked for a layout that lived up to the texts and the photographs, taken by Ludovica Barone in the workshops and ateliers of Florence, without upstaging either of them. Each chapter tells the story of a different artisan, which called for a grid that gave each one their own space and kept a recognisable thread from start to finish.

I started with a simple idea: to do with the layout what the artisan does with raw material, bringing it out without covering it up. Generous margins and white space that let the images breathe. The typeface is Arno: refined, close to handmade work, with the letterforms of the first books printed in Italy. It’s also named after Florence’s river, which does no harm in a book about the city’s workshops.

Full-bleed pages, where the photograph fills the whole page, alternate with pauses where the text opens out. Niccolò Leone’s introductory photographs, which show more of the setting, needed more white space around them, so every section has its own balance of filled and open space, tuned to the story it tells.

The cover is midnight blue, with the gold lily and the title embossed: I prepared the print-ready artwork for the special finishes myself.

On 11 July 2024 the book was launched among the vines at Tenuta di Poggio Casciano, Ruffino’s estate, in front of artisans, journalists and partners.